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Warlock PvE guide
Things Warlocks want Non-Warlocks to know * Ask for Healthstones! They're on a different timer than potions, spells, or anything (except Mage mana stones). It's a free, instant minor heal. However, they do cost the Warlock a Soul Shard and mana to make, and no one can have more than one of these at a time anyway, so don't ask for a stack of them. Usually opening a random trade with a Warlock means he/she is in need of a HS. This saves time and effort on both sides instead of making the warlock look for the person asking, make the Healthstone, as well as opening the trade window. Discuss this plan with your grouped Warlock before attempting to avoid confusion. * If you're a class that has buff spells, remember to put them on our Demons now and again. Our pets die sometimes or we swap pets because of a new situation and they benefit from those buffs just as much as we do, in fact, if the Warlock is a heavy Demonology spec, the buffs to the pets Intellect and Stamina directly amplify the Warlock's spell damage. * Don't sheep the mob with a DoT on it, you are wasting your mana. If you sheep a mob and it unsheeps right away spend half a second to see if it has a DoT on it, and stop wasting mana. If the group or raid planned to sheep it ahead of time, chew us out. * Don't attack what the Voidwalker or Felhunter is attacking; if you allow them to build aggro, you'll save tons on armor repairs, diseases, poisons, and curses cast by mobs. And if a Felhunter can take five melee hits, the attacker's power is much, MUCH lower. * If a Warlock has Banished a demon or elemental, don't bother to attack it, unless you're trying to build aggro against it. Unlike Polymorph, there is no way to break the Banish with damage; the Banished creature is totally invulnerable to all attacks and spells, but still keeps an aggro list. If all the other mobs in the same battle have been defeated, it might make sense to start attacking the Banished one with melee weapons so you're prepared when it returns to life (it is also possible to increase weapon skill by attacking a Banished target), but definitely don't cast any spells at it; you'd be wasting your mana. * Warlocks can heal themselves; it's better to conserve your mana and not heal them if they're above 60-70% health. It's quite possible they just replenished their mana with Life Tap and are about to bandage themselves, eat some food, or Cannibalize a nearby corpse -- save your mana for those who really need it. * If you're able to resurrect, and grouped with a Warlock, you should probably be Soulstoned. Read the Soulstone chapter for correct use of them. If you have no resurrection ability, don't expect a soulstone, and if you notice your Soulstone wore off and the warlock has not put up a new one let them know (it would be really nice to let them know when you've got about 5 mins left just as a reminder). * Warlocks need 3 people to summon you with Ritual of Summoning: the Warlock and 2 helpers. You, the Warlock, and the 2 assistants must all be in the same party or raid group, and the assistants have to be standing near the Warlock. If you're blindly asking a Warlock in some other zone to summon you, be aware that they may not be anticipating having to do so: they may not be in a party (and may be out in the middle of nowhere in Desolace or Tanaris with no one anywhere near them). It may require great amounts of patience, and probably payment, to convince a Warlock in this situation to form a party just to summon you. Your chances will be improved if you arrange the 2 helpers yourself so the Warlock doesn't have to. * Warlocks cannot summon a player into an instanced area from outside until 2.4 is released, so don't look like a noob by asking one to summon you into an instance. If a Warlock is in an instanced area, he/she can only summon you if you are in the same instance. This is, however, still a powerful ability; if you're stuck or have fallen to a lower floor, or if you've just joined the party and zoned into the instance, you may want to suggest that the Warlock summon you to his/her current position within the instance, as this could save you and the rest of the group a lot of time and trouble. * If you do need to summon a distant player to an instance, the Warlock and 2 other group members must exit the instance portal. If this is a PvP server, however, there may be opposite-faction players outside who will attack, so you may want to send someone to scout first and/or send more forces than just the 2 assistant summoners, because any damage disrupts Ritual of Summoning, and dead Warlocks can't summon anybody. * Warlocks have spells to detect invisibility, and they can cast them on you. However, invisibility detection does not help you detect Stealth, which is a completely different effect, so don't ask for Detect Invisibility to help you see Rogues. There aren't very many invisible mobs in the game, but they do exist. If you're in the same party with a Warlock who has a Felhunter out, you will acquire the Paranoia effect, which does increase your stealth detection, but Paranoia doesn't help with invisibility. * Don't ask a Warlock to put Blood Pact on you. If you don't already have it, one of the following is true: the Warlock doesn't have the Imp out, meaning that you'd effectively be telling the Warlock how to play his/her class; you're not in the Warlock's party, in which case asking for Blood Pact only makes you look like a noob; you're too far away from the Imp and just need to stay closer; or you have PvP enabled while the Warlock doesn't (or vice versa). * Some warlocks can actually tank. It's not nearly as effective as a real tank, but in case of dire need, a Demonology warlock soul linked has enough hit points and enough threat inducing abilities to tank pretty well, especially against magic casting classes. There's another form of tank for Affliction build Warlocks called "Drain-Tanking" where the warlock uses DoT spells to deal damage and hold aggro, and Drain Life to compensate for the damage he takes. It's a crude form of tanking, but it does work effectively with proper healing. * Warlocks cannot portal you anywhere, conjure you water or food, or heal you. Asking them to do these things is bad for your image. * Asking a warlock for a summon without a decent reason can be considered rude. Unless a warlock is advertising summoning services, you probably don't want to solicit them. If you are, be polite about it. Don't assume a warlock's job is to be your public transportation. Be tactful and be considerate when asking. Remember that the warlock is doing you a service that you have to earn, like any other. *Warlocks CANNOT resurrect people the same way as a Priest or Paladin can. If you die, don't ask a random Warlock for a resurrect because even if he/she wouldn't mind resurrecting you, they won't because the Soulstone doesn't work that way. Plus you'll end up looking like a noob. *If you are the class's healer and you see that your warlock has high health, but low mana, cast a HoT on them. This will allow them to use Life Tap to get more mana. *If a Warlock is casting Seed of Corruption as an AoE attack, do not attack the mobs which it is placed on. They have a purple swirling glow around them. If a mob with a SoC on it takes about 1k damage, all mobs will run to the Warlock and kill them rather quickly. Things Non-Warlocks want Warlocks to know * It would be nice to have a macro that is something like the following: /script PetAttack(); Sending pet to attack << %t >> This, if the Felhunter should be fighting a monster on its own (in order to get aggro) as mentioned above. * Please keep your pet under control while in instances or generally mob heavy areas. The excuse: 'I forgot i had it on aggressive lol' isn't going to refund your group's repair bills. Likewise, if you're using a Voidwalker, please make sure auto Torment is turned off, as this will help the tank hold aggro. * Please cast Curse of Recklessness on mobs that tend to run away when their health gets low, especially if more groups of enemies are nearby. Even Rank 1 of CoR has this effect, and it costs much less mana to cast than the higher ranks. But since debuffs often get pushed off during a long fight, you might want to wait and only cast it on mobs that are at less than half health. Of course, this is not a problem in non-raid groups as the number of debuff slots has been increased significantly. * Don't Life Tap below 50% without telling your healer. We're often looking at your health bar and not at what you're doing and we don't like to throw a big heal at you if you're just going to bandage anyway. Along the same line, don't expect your healer to be your mana battery. We're happy to drop you a heal over time now and again, but asking us to burn our mana just to fuel yours is rude. * Make sure you tell the group when your going to use seduction on someone with your Succubus before the battle starts. That way we won't attack it. * Don't ever, EVER, DoT adds, unless you are certain the tank can pick them up. A Mage polymorphing an add is far more useful than the DoT. Things Warlocks want New Warlocks to know * Like Hunters, you may have difficulty finding a group that will take you. This is because unlike mages/rogues/warriors/priests, we have no clearly defined role. This is very often our own fault, because many warlocks think they're mages and spend nearly the whole time spamming Shadow Bolt. However recently, more people have been seeing how valuable Warlocks can be in adding DPS. Additionally, the new BC 5-man instances are chock full of big pulls. For this reason, Warlocks multiple CC abilities (Seduce, CoEx, Fear, Banish) provide a very strong incentive to take us along. Your CC, Soulstone, and Ritual of Summoning are probably your main selling points, as is the fact that with Drain Life and Mana Tap, you can potentially stay alive when others are dying. For this reason, doing Engineering to get the jumper cables for resurrecting people might increase your chance of getting groups. * Don't tell anyone, but there's a good reason no one knows what we're supposed to be doing. That's because we haven't told them. We're the silent Generals of the battle field. Play it right and you'll do the most damage, reduce healing needed, take mobs off the tank, and increase the DPS of the mages and rogues, all the while dealing significant damage. More cynical people might point out that we have a lot in common with Bards ;) *DoT (Damage Over Time) planning. This is primarily corruption and immolation, and when no other curse is needed, Curse of Agony. Look to see which mobs are focused on their target. This will primarily be the off tanks, such as paladins, hunter pets, berserker warrior and your own VW. Even with the targets of the pure DPS classes, DoTs can be handy. They increase the speed that health bar drops, and even if you don't get maximum damage/duration out of them, it's normally in that last quarter bar or so of life that mobs turn to go after the mage/warlock. * Being a good Warlock requires micromanagment. Keeping track of all DoTs and debuffs, maintaining high health and mana, effectively controlling your demon, renewing up to four kinds of Crowd Control, constant adjustments to positioning, on-the-fly alternating of your Curses, all while inflicting high damage; Warlocks are the most complicated of all DPS classes, and have a large amount of utility. It is not unusual for Warlocks to install many addons and use several macros per fight. Our bag of tricks is deep, if you can master it, you can provide more aid to a party or raid than any other class. * Learn how to use all of the different pets. You'll often find in groups that people will tell you which pet to use, and more often than not, they'll be wrong. Your pet can be used to "fill in" abilities that the party is lacking, or accentuate other party members abilities. * The Imp is ideal when multiple party members are in melee, IE with a paladin/shaman or hunters pet off tanking. He not only boosts Health, making the healers job that much easier, he also increases damage with his fire shield, as well as his Firebolts. If you are specced for Dark Pact, the imp provides unsurpassed mana regeneration. Turning off fireballs and rather using him as a mana battery will increase your damage, especially in long fights. * The Voidwalker acts a very valuable off tank. Use him when an "irregular Tank" (paladin/druid/shaman) is the main tank and you have no warrior. Facing off against one less opponent makes it that much simpler to stay in control. Also can be used if you lack a mage as a form of sheep. He'll keep one mob out of combat for about 30 secs. The only difference is that the healer will be renewing his health, instead of you recasting sheep. * The Succubus adds to DPS if your group is overly defensive. Her seduce ability can also serve as a temporary fix when one of the casters draws aggro. * The Felhunter can very effectively take a casting mob out of the combat(when combined with curse of tongues), and unlike the Voidwalker, they'll be applying some damage as well. * Don't waste too much time summoning people you don't know. It's not worth the hassle and sets up bad habits for them in the future. If you ran somewhere, they can too. The obvious exception to this rule is if the person requesting a summon is there to help you do a quest. Summoning services can also be a good way of making money. * Summoning macros may be amusing the first time someone hears them, but after the 3rd or 4th time they get irritating and sound immature. Save yourself from getting uninvited from a group later, and delete any that you may have now. If you haven't made one then don't. Ever. Summoning macros qualify as the worst spam in the game in many opinions, so don't be surprised if you get griefed or /ignored for having one. If you have Necrosis, turn off the auto yell options. Everyone in yell range doesn't need to know you've just gotten on your mount. This is especially true on PvP servers, where hostile players will be alerted to your presence. General tips Rogue Give them a Healthstone. Have your pet seduce or offtank additional mobs. Versus one opponent, Curse of Weakness can help the rogue survive longer, or just cast your DOTs, Curse of Shadow and Shadow Bolt to death. Warrior Give them a Healthstone. Casting a Curse of Weakness on the mobs attacking them can help them take less damage, especially if there is a large number of mobs attacking them. Casting Curse of Recklessness on the one mob the warrior is currently attacking will significantly decrease the mob's armor and increase the damage the warrior is doing. The mob will have a simultaneous increase in attack power, but the fact that it will die sooner will offset this. Do not cast Curse of Recklessness on more than one mob that is attacking the same warrior. Priest Give them a Healthstone. Soulstone them if they are your main healer. This will get your party up and running after a wipe. Your priest (or paladin or shaman) resurrects with the soulstone and then resurrects everyone else. If they are a Shadow priest, putting Curse of Shadow on whatever they're attacking can help them kill it faster. In groups if they draw aggro, you can step in with Seduction, Searing Pain or the Voidwalker to save them. It is better for them to be healing you than themselves. Watch their mana bar. If its full, you can afford to tap your life into mana and blast away with Shadow Bolt, if it's running low stick with more efficient spells like Curse of Agony Warlock Give them a Healthstone, unless they've already made one for themselves. If you have different numbers of points in the Improved Healthstone talent, you can trade Healthstones that give different amounts of health. Collaborate with them as to what pets and what curses to use - no use having two imps out. Having one warlock cast Curse of the Elements and another cast Curse of Shadow can be very effective. Mage Give them a Healthstone. You might want to make sure that they know it’s on the same cooldown as their mana stones, to avoid unexpected surprises. Casting Curse of the Elements on the mob they're attacking is good if they're a Frost or Fire mage. Curse of Shadow is better if they're an Arcane mage - and it's good for you, too, as it will increase your Shadow damage. Standing near the mage and combining your Hellfire with their Arcane Explosion (especially if the mage has the Arcane Impact talent) can take down large numbers of nearby mobs at once. Do not try this on elite mobs, but against normal mobs of your level this combination can take out large groups quickly. Searing Pain is effective at drawing aggro, and with its talent (+10% crit) it can grab even more. In a normal fight, the mages will fire so hard and fast that there is nothing even a skilled tank can do to keep their target from going after them. When this does happen, the mages DPS drops dramatically as they take evasive action. The mobs inevitable charge towards the mage need not be a bad thing however. The time it spends running from the tank to the mage is time its not spending dealing damage. Spammed Searing Pain can do one of 2 things - finish the target off, or grab the aggro from the mage(assuming you have DoTs on it already). If you've positioned yourself right, its then going to spend another 4 seconds or so running across the battle field to get to you, during which time the mage has opened another can of whoop $%& on it, either killing it or drawing the threat back, allowing you to go back to SP to help finish it off. What makes this even more effective is as you're both using the same element of spell, the curse of Elements is working for both of you! Druid If the druid will be healing, or staying out of shapeshift most of the time, then it would be wise to give them a Healthstone. Even when in a form, smart druids will have a macro that shifts them out, uses the healthstone and shift them back instantly. You can Soulstone them, but it's not recommended, as their resurrection spell has a cooldown and requires a reagent. It is only recommended to soulstone them if they are your only healer. If a Druid is fighting in bear form, see Warrior above. If a Druid is fighting in cat form, see Rogue above. Balance Druids appreciate Curse of Shadows because their most mana efficient spell, Starfire, does arcane damage. Hunter Give them a Healthstone. Keep in mind that hunters have Arcane-based ranged weapon attacks, meaning that Curse of Shadow would tend to amplify their damage. Consider putting Curse of Recklessness on whatever the hunter or the hunter's pet is attacking, as with warriors; its attack strength will increase to some extent, but this will be more than offset by the fact that it will die faster. Paladin Give them a Healthstone Casting a Curse of Weakness on the mobs attacking them can help them take less damage, especially if there are a large amount of mobs attacking them. Curse of Recklessness will, as for warriors, cause whatever mob they're attacking to take more damage and die faster, even if its attack strength increases somewhat; paladins can wear lots of armor. Soulstone them if they are your main healer. Sometimes, it's better to Soulstone a Paladin than a Priest because of their survivability if a mob were to aggro after they resurrected. Paladins are casters. Expect them to want caster items. You share swords. Caster daggers and staffs are more plentiful and they can't use those. Shaman Give them a Healthstone. Shamans already have a self resurrect ability, but are still often good characters to Soulstone as they have a no cooldown resurrection. Most shaman offensive spells are nature based, with some fire, so no particular curses are more useful with shamans. Category:Warlocks